EduwebTV Course Successful?

The internal course was conducted from 28 - 29th April at the school Access Centre. It was a follow up course after the course I attended early last month. Fifteen fellow colleagues, teaching various subjects, attended the course. I tried my best to share my knowledge of how to benefit from the educational portal. However, I would be lying if I said that it was a completely satisfying course. There were many glitches, mainly concerning technicality of playing the videos, which are the most important part of this course. I did not have ample time to check every computer used for this course, thus rendering these technical slip-ups to happen. Sorry to all the participants, but luckily they did not return home empty handed. They knew how make a playlist, download a video, and how to use it beneficially in their PNPs.

Some pictures from the course:

EduwebTV Course

Tomorrow, I will be conducting the EduwebTV course for the teachers. It will be a two-day course because it is held during the school day. For starters, I only open it to 20 teachers on the first-come-first-serve basis. I will see if this course is a successful one, I will consider conducting another in the near future. I know that many of them do not have the opportunity to attend courses outside the school, thus slimming their chance of fulfilling the 7 days annual requirement for the in-service training. Therefore, they really need this course and any other courses in order to complete their requirement.

Virus, Virus, Oh Go Away!

Part of my job as a person in-charge of ICT in the school is to ensure that all computer is virus-free There are many types of viruses found in our computers; some of them were malicious and some not that dangerous. However, I took no chances and tried to remove them all. Some of the viruses (and the method I used to remove them) are mentioned below:

1. Trojan.BAT.Shutdown.bi found in C:\WINDOWS\pc-off.bat
This is a very malicious trojan where I found it repeatedly shut down a computer in the computer lab, making it difficult for me to do anything about it. So, I hooked the hard drive to another pc and scanned it with Kaspersky, which deleted it from the hard drive.


2. IM-Worm.Win32.Sohanad.bm
This is a common virus found in our computers. It copied itself and made dubious new folders all around the system. Actually, according to the definition, it is a worm generation programme which can create different types of worms when residing in the system. Luckily, however, Kaspersky picked it out easily and did the job for me.

Virus Prevention Tip:

It is quite perplexing how users always neglected to scan their removable drive (eg. pen drives and diskettes) before using it. No amount of anti viruses are to be responsible for the insertion of the virus if they are not used. This is what they should do:

1. Insert the pen drive.
2. Do not open the pen drive (or diskette) when prompted by this dialogue box.


3. Scan with anti virus (Kaspersky is provided by the Ministry of Education, thankfully)
4. Use the pen drive safely.


There is also a technical way (using CMD.exe or Command Window) of removing pen drive virus I found here.

Basic Knowledge for Car Owners

Today was the first time I had to use my skill of changing tyres. Actually, one of my father's rear tyre burst during his drive to Tanah Merah to see his grandchild, 'Ammar. Luckily for him, the incident happened only 5 kilometres from my in-law house where I was at that time. I quickly drove to the scene and tried my hands at something I never done before. It was also quite funny to see that the spare tyre was so small! Carefully, I drove the car to the nearest workshop and bought a new tyre.

Look at the spare tyre!

Well, changing tyre is quite easy when you know the correct way of doing it. Basically, these are the steps for changing tyres:

1. Park the car on level ground and engage the handbrake.
2. Loose the wheel bolts slightly (but not completely).
3. Jack up the car.
4. Remove the wheel bolts completely and take out the tyre.
5. Put the spare tyre and tighten the wheel bolts slightly.
6. Remove the jack and tighten the wheel bolts completely.

There is a pictorial guide on how to change tyre I found on the Net.

Al-Fatihah to Asmady Zakaria

Road accidents have been the cause of death for many Malaysians nowadays. A look at the statistic provided by Malaysian Institute of Road Safety (MIROS) in their 10 year research shows that the number of deaths are steady at around 6,000 for the year 1997-2007. Last year's events, which ended in a sour note with fatal accident in Kuala Krai, are incapable of giving the lessons for our motorists, as this year started with equally fatal accident in Gua Musang, where 10 people died in the collision between a Kancil, a Kenari and a Nissan Murano. I am prompted to write about road accidents today as one of my friend, Mohd Asmady bin Zakaria, died today in an accident after Jumaat prayer. It has been a long time since I last saw him, but I was equally sad when told about the news this evening. May he rest in peace, al-Fatihah.

Found his blogs. Read and weep here and here.

Teaching Literature to Weak Pupils

Tomorrow, I will attempt teaching Si Tenggang's Homecoming to 4 Sejahtera pupils, a weak class in term of English studies (other subjects also, for that matter). Their level of command is around 5 percent only; their vocabulary is so little, even simple words such as 'reach' they got it wrong and wrote it as 'rich'. It will be an uphill task; I struggled getting them to understand Sonnet 18. However, I will try teaching the poem while at the same time upgrading their vocabulary by asking them to fill in the blanks in the poem's synopsis with several target words. This way, the pupils will learn at least 10 new words and understand the poem in general.

By the way, there's a great website on literature for secondary school pupils which I want to promote. You can enjoy it by clicking here.